Glowworm
by prudish
Summary: Someday she will shine. SnapeGinny. Drabbles in a storyline.
1. train

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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Everything outside is blurry, like quick smears and smudges from a thumb .

The red seat next her is warm when her fingers creep up onto it; he's gone off to chase the snack trolley with Ron. His pockets are full of glittering things that she likes and everyone likes. His face is full of warm things that she likes and most people like. His scar is full of obscene things she dislikes and everything most people dislike.

It's a bit awkward between her and Hermione. Hermione doesn't approve how impressionable Ginny is - especially that incident two years back - and she doesn't like how butterflies flap their wigs on Ginny's eyelids whenever Harry is around. But fortunately, she can bring herself to make small talk, like weather and good reads over the summer.

Ginny stares out in the dizziness again when Hermione learns that Ginny is not a voracious reader. It is an olive branch broken in two, and she is too embarrassed that she hasn't read the biography of Helga Hufflepuff like Hermione has, six times. It's just the same frustration that coils and rattles its tail when all the sticky boughs coalesce and the clouds mingle all too closely as if they're ready to leave a party. The sun yawns and leaves in a rich, operatic red. The night tumbles in lazily, stretching out in the sun's wake.

Harry and Ron return from the snack trolley, chocolate frogs dancing on Ron's static head, and bearded wizards waving on cards between Harry's knuckles and a smidgeon of chocolate outside his lip. She thinks it's funny how a skeleton can come back to life and brush the cobwebs off himself with just a square of chocolate.

He offers her a chocolate frog.

She opens her mouth, cobwebs for teeth.

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	2. golden boy

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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Harry Potter is golden.

King Midas has branded him with his wand, and makes Harry off limits to anyone who has dug their hands into the earth and felt worms slither against their fingers. Harry has never made any point of wanting to tarnish his gold. Even the hands from the richest soils curl away at his brilliance. Some fingers pinch and poke; but he stays golden.

He is as golden as the goblet she drinks from, and she doesn't believe he is golden because of those cockroaches crawling and rats hissing at his feet. But pumpkin juice dribbles down his chin as he laughs his golden laugh and smiles his golden smile. It's hard to believe he folds himself away while the sunshine is rampant and she can catch it through her fingers. He shines himself when the heat is carefully packaged away and September sails in like a boat to the shore; he can be blown out like a candle.

Ginny admires the ceiling that's become freckled - like herself - since on the train the night had just stretched over the sky. Ron accidentally jabs her with his elbow, and flings an offhanded apology in her direction with his cheeks stuffed full of buttered squash, little flecks leaping onto the goblet threaded between his fingers. Should Mum see his behavior, Ginny doesn't want to think about it. Her eyes rove off into the constellations she can partially recognize and those she plays connect-the-dots with. The ceiling and the wall clash abruptly; she quits lollygagging when Dumbledore's beard begins to wag like a dog's tail and his mystical fingers twist wantonly as he talks.

The professors are all keen and current, their faces astute and not the least bit jolly until Dumbledore's beard stops wagging. Then they toast and become cheerful - all save Snape. There are no ghosts floating his head, though, no devils or demons gnawing at the hem of his black robes. So she just assumes he prefers to fester in a shadow, something she cannot argue.

All warm and gilded colors wrap around the Gryffindor table like their house scarves knotted together.

With Harry Potter, they are all so golden.

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	3. drip drop

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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Ginny feels like a drip from a leaky faucet.

A few weeks into class and now dark, brooding clouds are forming over Harry's head. She supposes it's just Harry's aura, that impending doom she feels while she sits with him, always mixes and confuses with the warm glow that prods at her heart. For now she has decided to focus on her studies. Even though she still can't say a word to Harry Potter and her lips are covered in salt. She is drowning.

Ginny sits in common room with a few ruddy girls from her classes. They are her buoys in this deep sea. They do their homework, their minds on laughs and wholesome good fun while Ginny is hacking up sea water on shore. Her knees are buried so deeply in the sand, the little granules chafe her knees and make them red as she stands up and joins the others in this side of the world when they ask her a question. She tells them she doesn't know, but is very grateful for their intrusion.

All the words in Ginny's yellowing textbook are only little bits of ink spilled here and there. They make no sense as Harry Potter comes into the common room with her brother and that snubbing Hermione Granger. She can not hear what they're saying, but she is certain that it is some elaborate plan to justify a wrong-doing. That's what the golden Harry is best for - tilting the wizarding world back onto its crooked axis. She's tempted to move to a chair closer, but decides not to, the way that Hermione is curling a fluffy strand around her finger and staring at her toes.

Harry makes frantic gestures and looks slightly panicked, and Ginny wonders if there's anything she can contribute to his cause. Probably not. And it's just to keep it that way. Any time she wants to hook her pinky with his, something goes absurdly wrong. To keep her distance is the best for Harry with such a heavy onus already - she wouldn't want to triple his load.

Crookshanks crunches very loudly on his food in the dormitory that night when they all go to bed. Ginny wishes the rumors about cats stealing breath in the night were true.

She has sunk to the bottom of the sea.

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	4. letters

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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A girl must be lively and tangled in thorns if she is ever going to have success in the world.

Ginny watches Harry watch a girl from the Ravenclaw table at breakfast time. The dull throb of life is still pulsating in the veins of the Great Hall, only it is morning and a fresh crop of owls stir some nodding heads. She isn't positioned so she can see Harry's mail conspicuously, so she must crane her neck and stick out her tongue a bit. While she leans one way, it affects another, and the fifth-year boy she's sitting next to ruffles up because she's spilled his morning juice.

"Sorry."

She sops it up with a handkerchief, wads it, and intentionally goes the long way around the table so she can spy behind Harry. He's got a letter - from Sirius, she assumes, and a copy of _The Daily Prophet_. Nothing to wrap the cockles of her heart around and storm and brood about in privacy. The almost-disappointment claws her like an owl's foot. Harry is only dreaming of someone; Ginny is only becoming a masochist.

Outdoors morning classes are still crispy and palatable until the frost comes in and pumpkins spice the campus. Ginny stands out in the greenhouses during herbology behind a lanky Slytherin boy; she can't see the gnarly little witch teaching that class, hardly. Only hear her chipper, scratchy voice as she explains a root balm used to salve the areas on dragons where scales fall out.

She only wishes that balm wasn't poisonous to humans so she might use it on her heart.

But she may use it anyway.

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	5. cauldrons

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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"_Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble._"

Ginny is quite forlorn internal rhymes from muggle literature don't make her small cauldron begin to boil. Her partner, a bespectacled Slytherin witch, presses her lips together at Ginny's desperation and suggests that Ginny take this assignment seriously. Potions is a class that has a simple procedure in the beginning (mince magical toads, dice body lice, sprinkle in pixie dust) but requires just the right amount of a everything and must come out a liquefied masterpiece at the end. About now, she thinks it's appropriate yearn for her father's fetish for muggle objects - one called a blender so she can blend herself and make herself into a potion.

Snape haunts each station like a vengeful spirit as he floats from pair to pair, his hands clasped behind his back. She doesn't pay much attention to him after that. The dillies and dallies in her mind are ricocheting in her skull as her Slytherin partner hands her the knife to chop the lamb's eyeballs on the cuttingboard. She's already quartered four of them when her edgy partner elbows her in the ribs - a forewarning of the teacher coming. At least she is that considerate.

A gooey eye slips and she slices her thumb open, knocking the cuttingboard over with her elbow. She doesn't see the bits of lamb's eye plopping onto the shiny black toe of a shoe and leaving a slimy trail when they slide off.

Her partner looks as if her soul is going to be sucked from her body.

"Weasley."

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	6. trophy room

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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It's Saturday and Ginny is starring as Cinderella in a solo performance in the trophy room.

Snape has only come to check up on her once, his beetle eyes making gooseflesh rise and his stale voice inducing sleep better than a potion he could concoct. She had only stared at him as he handed her the bucket and brush. Now her knees are feeling sore and she wants to return to the common room where the heat is and everyone else is. As of the moment, the only things she has to look forward to are a cold shoulder from Snape and the stiffness of her joints before she goes to bed. The trophy room is full of trophies, brassy and cool enough to cancel out October.

Sometimes it's rewarding to see the embossments of former Weasleys in the gold - there aren't many, but enough to impress her. Dirt and grime coat these artifacts; Ginny's is surprised because of all the detentions issued by Snape. But perhaps the students don't actually do their jobs. She crushes a scampering cockroach with her toe as it passes by, its crackle and crunch splurting goo on the bottom of her shoe. When she stands with the bucket in one hand and the brush in the other, she slips and falls with a yelp. Ginny winces and swallows when she feels the soapy water pool next to her ribs, and she is pretending it's a fatal wound and the water is actually blood.

Her resurrection comes all in a rush when Snape wraps on the door, and she realizes it's seven o'clock. Her reflection in a rather large quidditch cup is forming words, but not saying them. Finally, he comes in and hisses her last name between his teeth, his lips unwiring and his hook nose dimpling.

Ginny really wishes her hair was brown, black, pink, blonde - anything but red. Red always gets her into so much trouble.

Snape thinks the reflection in the trophy can blur her features out almost enough.

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	7. so dry

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

The breeze teases the crackling leaves in the trees.

Everything is so dessicated, but decorated to be made festive, even if it is not. It's like how Ginny feels when she watches a sallow-faced Slytherin girl smack her lips in a handheld mirror, running her pinky over them. No matter how many pumpkins are strung from the ceiling in the Great Hall, the walls are still stone and mortar and the sky is still as black as a screeching bat's wing.

Ginny scratches out a letter to her mother - as per request - and ties a red ribbon she found in the corridor around it. She brushes the dust from the ribbon with her thumb, and tries to tie it so it's not showing, but her mother is used to things like that. Molly Weasley smiles in cobwebs just like her daughter.

On her way to the owlery she sees Harry Potter. He's panting, out of breath, and his bangs tangled in sweat. If she tilts her head a little, she can see a dark pontytail and a face that Ginny thinks blends into the season impeccably. Cho Chang nibbles at her thumb as Harry's head droops and he starts toward Ginny - he doesn't know she's there. She's careful to slip into the owlery, where it stinks a little and straw rustles when she steps on it. When she turns around to see if Harry is still outside, he is gone, and the castle and the sky and the ground are all just one gray backdrop ground up in a muggle blender.

Pigwidgeon ruffles out a bit and hoots, shaking his claw, as she fastens the letter to his foot.

She cannot dive off the parapets with the family owl just yet.

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	8. black birds

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

There is nothing special about people with black talons or glossy feathers.

Ginny sees for a second time, Harry Potter, his forehead slick. He's moving his lips and gesturing toward the rafters and no words come out - much like Ginny. The girls at the Ravenclaw table, hunched over and sharp eyes focused on what's on the end of their forks, don't study him curiously. Rather they think of him as pink worm squirming up from the earth, and something that belongs in their beaks - without a pair of dark, geometic wings of his own.

Cho Chang has a softer edge - her claws are wrapped around a wire, blinking down at Harry in a a quizzical way, as if she's not yet ready to pluck his juicyness from the ground. Harry wriggles and is trying to break through the earth. Ginny is now a sadist; she wants Cho to tear Harry from the ring of dirt clustered around him and mince him in her macabre bill.

As Ginny pays rapt attention, Cho smiles the smallest of smiles, like a bud of a rose. But Harry sticks himself as he gets tangled in the thorns and his fingerlike body curls dead when dropped. Relief slicks over her mind, bursts and spasms as Harry sits down next to Ron again. The defeat doesn't seem to phase him, though, as he sops up gravy with his bread (his cheeks have filled out since he returned to school) and he looks more determined than ever whiles his eyes glide along with Cedric Diggory's feet - lips grinding against teeth as he chews.

Ginny leaves to the common room where there are no stark black eyes or axeblade beaks hungry for worms. Crookshanks paws around her in lazy circles, bottlebrush tail flush against the hem of her robes.

Orange-haired folks should stick together.

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	9. not sleep

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Tonight it's very chilly in the dormitory.

Tonight she can hear everyone else snoring and breathing and drooling in their sleep. She's been awake since she came from the Great Hall. All the stars out in the sky are telling her to go to sleep, and when she flutters her eyelids, they giggle. Good little mommies and daddies watching up in the pitch - watching Ginny furl her toes and twitch her nose, her hair rumple into ugly and her eyes not see well in the dark. She turns her nose into the pillow and it smells like school - like cold stone and sizzling wands.

Another girl has an elevating snore, jolting Ginny's head up a little, a little dewlap forming with her stretched mouth. It all settles back like dust again and she wants to go to sleep. But she supposes insomnia can't hurt her too much for one night. A nap in muggle studies tomorrow will tide her over until the weekend when all the gray space can be filled with snores and dreams and nightmares and tossing and turning - she doesn't really have anyone she wants to warm up with now.

Her black-stockinged feet slide down the fleecy spine of Crookshanks as he leaps on to her trunk and weighs down the bed almost much as she does. His squash face stares a minute then he folds himself like a turban on her pillow - Ginny can only see a bit. Perhaps he is forcing her to go to sleep. (But since when has Hermione's cat become her own?)

In the morning, she's looking forward to pastry icing on her lips and the stark wash of morning juice down her throat.

The afternoon will be looking bleak, she knows.

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	10. downer

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A big thanks to everyone who has reviewed/favorited/C2ed/alerted. :)

* * *

No one ever comes up to the parapets in the afternoon, especially when it's this cold.

The sky is ready to swallow her up and she is ready, too, for it to unhinge its jaws and tunnel down its throat like a blackhole. This way she can float up with the stars and giggle with them and watch from the heavens as Harry Potter lives and dies. She can be golden too, and her hands will no longer be in the dirt with nasty things crawling around. Harry will grow pretty black wings and a hooked beak. While she's in the sky she can touch him too, if she's golden.

Ginny leans over the stone ledge, the air's saying yes and so are the different kind of worms eating on her mind and making it numb. She runs her hand over the grainy gargoyle and asks it a question, little stone flecks coming off. The sun is hiding behind a copse of fleecy gray clouds, as if it doesn't want to see anything gruesome or grisly happening on the campus. She's mad, both ways - she wants a lovely gulp of sunshine before she is busted on the prickly, yellow grass.

And when the sun says that it's still not going to give her a drink, she climbs up on the stone parapets, hoping if there are maggots down there they will eat her up before smells and anyone notices - she has heard they make for good companions.

The first brave moment in her life, and she's really not all that scared. The sky will push her face into the ground and there she will meet new friends - ones that will eat up and drink her presence until it's all gone. Ginny spreads out her arms like she's grown a pair of pretty black wings, and tumbles down.

But she's only slipped and her hands are tense and red, chafing and cold as she clings onto the head of the same gargoyle she was talking to earlier. Its eyes are pitying, sympathetic instead of wicked and ghastly. Maybe it didn't like the idea.

"Too bad."

Before she can unclasp her fingers, though, she is floating up, the hood of her robes holding her like an invisible hand (God's hand?) lifting her away. Then she sees two shiny beetle eyes and a wand pointing out at her like a sword she would like to twist through her chest.

Oh, Professor. Professor.

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	11. spiny chair

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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A muggle named Christopher Columbus once claimed the world was round, but it's actually just very unfair.

She's sitting in his office, in one of the spiny-backed chairs in front of his desk. His beetle eyes are crawling all over the place, making her feel like she is buried up to the throat in dirt with a tombstone by her ear. After a giving detailed list of what he is going to do for her "misbehavior," like take her to McGonagall - because this is the Head of Gryffindor's problem and so students from there are _not_ his - and he brings up all sorts of other things that make the worms come out and gnaw very leisurely on her brain.

Ginny takes an earful and sucks in her cheeks while he is penning out the report - very carefully, dipping his quill in the ink at close intervals. The shadow he is festering in has stretched out to her, and those dark, brooding clouds over Harry have decided she makes a fine nest, too. All the parchment in his office remind her of the bodies of dead weasels and owls, decomposing all over his desk and leaving a nasty smell. Usually she will just shut up and be calm, say for a detention, but today she feels like the wrong words have slipped off her tongue or she missed a good hit in quidditch.

She can smell the potions brewing around the office - mostly simple remedies for the other professors' health problems. Some smell fruity and divine; others like rotting flesh and burnt hair. Once especially redolent potion boiling nearest her nose reminds her of stale autumn grass, the crunchy odor she last wanted to salute her nostrils before she gave herself to the worms. But she already has given herself to them.

Snape swings his beak in her direction when she begins to mutter.

"Professor, is there a potion that can make the worms go away? They're awfully hungry."

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	12. no heroes

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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The world has dried up of monsters, thus there are no heroes.

Ah, but there are monsters everywhere, tangible and scaly and furry and wet and dry. Only now they refer to them as 'magical creatures' instead of monsters, because the ones that can actually think and talk and communicate (some more than others) are offended by such a spiteful word. But Ginny thinks they are toad warts compared to what those thick, fat juicy maggot-looking monsters can do to her brain. She feels like nothing and everything as she picks at the seat of the spiny-backed chair, her throat congested like a nose should be.

"Excuse me?"

His beetle eyes aren't crawling all over her anymore, in place, although the legs look squirmy still. Ginny wants to unscrew the top of her head and show him her brain so he can scrape away all those filthy worms on it. Her eyes will be dead as he does it, two holes in her head he sets it carefully back in, and she will walk away all better. Anyone who can do this for her will be a hero, she will believe again. She promises. Her fingers pinch the sleeve of his robe as she leans in, as if to whisper.

"Do you have something? Anything?"

He rewinds in his mind, to stick-straight red hair and eyes that made him want to roll around in the grass, but these are so different. Eyes that make him want to dive in muddy water, the same famished questions breathed into his ear. The position of the hairclip that is a portal to years ago and he does not see those feline cheeks or the sprigling of freckles across her nose. Just the crosshatched illusion of a past love. His eyes turn dead and silent again.

No normal girls go out on the parapets to dally around, especially alone.

He has never been a hero before.

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	13. cold, warm

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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She feels so strange, like a bucket of cold water has made her warm.

Ginny's sitting next to Harry in the Great Hall, and she doesn't clam up when he asks about classes around roasted pheasant - they eat so sumptuously at this school. Harry is bronze now, and everything else seems to be rosy. So rosy she taps the side of her head to make sure she isn't wearing glasses. Ron talks to her a little; Hermione makes a comment on how rested and relaxed she looks. Ginny takes this all in stride and feels half smug as she excuses herself. Somewhere, she says inscrutably, when asked.

Those lovely worms haven't gnawed or nipped for the rest of the day - she's left her scruples on her plate and her worms backwashed in her goblet. She's not quite sure where she is, though, and presses her forehead up against the window pane in one of those great big windows that seem to stretch for miles. It's a week before Halloween - all the fresh pumpkins are beginning to reek and the cuts in their faces are starting to callus. They're still sharp of friendly if she squints, and she does as she comes to a place she recognizes.

The Fat Lady permits her in, in that operatic manner. Strange woman, she is. Ginny flies up to her bed without saying hello to anyone in the common room - no one really pays attention, anyway. She is just content to lie there on the bed and hug her pillow to her. No one is up there right now - but someone has played hero for her. And she is pretending the pillow is him.

Crookshanks is cracking his kibbles.

The pillow is splitting its seams.

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	14. just a git

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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He has just told a nasty lie.

But sonnets are ricocheting off the insides of his skull and he is paging through a dusty old Potions book - one he found in the restricted section. Judging by the leather binding and fifteenth-century language in the book, it will crumble in to dust any time now. But the librarian must have but a Preserving Charm on it. Perhaps she did so shortly after the book was written.

The elaborate print and the minced words of a velvety quill trouble him - like he's reading Macbeth instead of a potion recipe. His fingers slip up and down the spine when he puts it back, after he's copied the riddling recipe into English he can understand.

Professor Snape has concocted so many potions in his lifetime, ones that cure and save and revitalize the human population, but he has never stirred up one for himself. Not for himself, really. But one for selfish purposes. He feels a measure of guilt as he drops powered newt tail into the hissing rust-colored brew - newt tail tastes wretched. Were he more confident, he would rich the taste up a little. But since this potion is forbidden and very complicated to make, he must stick with the raw form. There is no time to refine.

After it's done and murky-looking (most old ones are), he pours it into a flask so it won't deter upon presentation. The remaining, with the dregs and the little milky spindles like soap in a tub, he dumps down the sinks, a sadly and a little happily - he could have sold it on the black market. But he doesn't think just any average git should hold this much power.

He scrubs out the cauldron and smiles, like he hasn't for years.

Just a git like himself.

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	15. slipping sip

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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Afternoons are best spent in the cushy chairs of the common room.

But instead she is tiptoeing down to the dungeons, where everything is black and creepy - the torches flickering like yellow ghosts with gaping mouths at her. Really she thinks nothing of it for the things nipping at her mind and the confidence from walking down here with classmates. (Though it is a bit spooky without rattling tongues.)

Down in this part of the school, a student can't distinguish day from night or night from day, but it almost certaintly feels like night.

She stands outside and waits - that is what he told her to do - but she doesn't see how he can tell she's there. A few minutes pass, and she is becoming doubtful. The torches seem to drift off their perches and howl and hoot around like owls freed from their duties.

The door creaks open and she stares back into his creeping beetle eyes, which are crawling all over her - as if asking barrages of questions. It doesn't make her shudder or anything; she's just curious to see if his solution will work.

He invites her in - not very cordially, just with a twitch of his beak - and he taps the the spiny-backed chair in front of his desk as he goes by, so she will sit.

She wonders, she wonders, what it is. And he is quick to collect a queer-looking flask from a cupboard. He sits down in his chair, leans forward enough so his beak is inches away from her nose (he has crooked his finger - to tell a secret), and drones to her in his cold-stone voice.

"This will help you." And his shiny beetle eyes squirm. "Go on, take a drink."

She uncorks the flask and takes a swig - terrible taste, as she hacks and wheezes all over his desk.

She goes ramrod stiff for a moment in her spiny-backed chair, then tilts her head to the side and gives him a smile he hasn't seen in decades.

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	16. unbuttoned

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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She can't remember a thing.

All she knows is, when she wakes up in the spiny-backed chair in Snape's office, that Professor Snape is gone and she must've fallen asleep. Ginny panics for a moment - eyes loping around feverishly for him - then realizes that he's a professor and professors always have better things to do than bother with their students for more time than needed. The chair squealing, she stands up and glowers at the dungeon.

It's about time to go.

Until a little note on a torn piece of parchment near the spiny-backed chair catches her eye. It says, in spidery cursive writing, that she should return tomorrow after supper in the Great Hall. He will be waiting for her and tells her not to bring her wand. This is all, of course, in brittle-crisp words that befit Snape.

A potion is brewing on the counter behind his desk - it smells similar to the one he gave her: sour and of cow dung. She debates with herself as she closes the heavy wooden door behind her, if she should return tomorrow night or not. But she will see him in class soon enough and he'll be suspicious - perhaps even outright cruel to her in class.

Her robes feel stiff and a little warm - as if they've just been ironed like Molly always does. And they feel like they've been tucked on too primly; Ginny never tucks here robes in too primly. She swallows and looks back at Snape's office door, steps hastening.

When she reaches up to scratch her head, her hairclip is on the right side, not the left like it usually is.

But she decides that it's only her imagination projecting rainbows on the wall - something like that would never happen to a girl like her.

Professors only ever have time to do professor-ly things. That's all.

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	17. quill in ink

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Thanks, StoneSilver, for all your reviews. It's a great fuel. :)

* * *

He has been on tenderhooks all day.

In Potions class, he has no nerves because he knows that she has no idea - he figures that she thinks it's a sleeping potion - and it should stay that way unless she's a more clever witch than he can guess. He pretends to let stray ink drip into the pot from his quill, but he's actually just trying to get a good look at her.

She looks no different to him, just pressing her lips together as she and the Slytherin witch hunched beside her brew a potion used for curing excessive body hair on a pet toad. Of course, he's grown some confidence now that he's seen her disposition - cheerful to the surface and brooding in the mind, the best kind of person to be his experiment.

The Slytherin girl, to his surprise, has almost taken a liking to her Gryffindor counterpart: she no longer snaps or pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose reproachfully. Weasley winces when a puff of gray smoke clouds her eyes and she glances up at him.

He lets a drop of ink pass over her face before he realizes it.

And he begins to scrawl in his spidery cursive, great big 'D's and nasty grades. He is not surprised there are no 'O's. (Weasley has earned 'D'. And he doesn't even flinch while he writes it - a good sign, he assures himself.)

He dismisses the class with rolls of marked-up parchment stuffed into their bags haphazardly and groans about poor marks. (Oh, God - he loves to hear them do that.)

Weasley turns around and gives him an affirmative glance - she will be there tonight. He feels excitement and guilt stir up in his stomach as he dips his quill into the inkwell this time, with actual intent of doing so.

To him, she is not Ginny Weasley.

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	18. wake up

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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Tonight, Ginny is going to keep her eyes open.

As she swallows and wheezes after ingestion, Snape's beetle eyes are very relaxed and not squirmy at all, wallowing in self-assurance. But it's very hard to keep her eyes open, like lost being lost in the hazy space between sleep and wakefulness. The drowsiness drags her off a little, though, and her lids sink shut, baring some slit like a fly twitching the in throes of death. She gets to a happy medium, where she can see through patches in her lashes and she is conscious enough to see shadowy outlines.

He gets up from his chair and kneels beside her in the spiny-backed chair.

She wants to cry out when his fingers, like spider's legs, jig through her hair - but she can't. All she can do is keep her mouth clamped shut and see his beetle eyes bleeding out glee and his mouth and beak twitch simultaneously as he moves in closer to press his lips against her forehead - chilly like an October breeze and very dry.

"It's been so long," he says, "and I'm really very glad to see you again. Though, I suppose it's not the most appropriate way to go about it."

She feels like one of those mannequins in Diagon Alley that wear fresh hats and robes in the windows of shops. This is frightening.

He taps the end of her freckled nose with his finger and the side of his mouth quirks. "I think we went a bit far last night," he regards Ginny a moment, " but it was very worth the time."

He moves in to give her a real, cool kiss on her mouth - where Ginny has never been kissed before even by a boy in her own class. She thinks she can muster enough disgust to wake up.

They blink into one another's eyes, not breathing.

* * *


	19. just fine

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Hermione Granger comes back up from the common room.

She thinks she's come exceptionally early - prickled by one of Ron's offhanded comments - and is surprised to see one set of drapes already drawn. They belong to Ginny Weasley.

Which is odd because she doesn't hear any snoring or movement or anything that might indicate another's presence. But there's a heap of robes and socks and day clothes strewn on the floor - and Ginny's trunk is unlocked, closed, but unlocked.

Hermione, after peeling off her own socks and shoes, swipes back the drapes and reels back, just a little.

Ginny Weasley is sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, in a nightgown, eyes looking glassy and as if she's been hexed.

"Are you all right, Ginny?" Hermione asks urgently, squatting on the bed next to Ginny.

She doesn't wait for an answer, though, because she grabs Ginny's wrists and drags her downstairs and through the common room - not without a few gawkers - and down to McGonagall's office. Hermione flings Ginny in front of McGonagall, who has gotten up from her desk rather quickly.

"What's the matter, Weasley?"

Ginny sweeps her eyes up slowly from her bare feet to McGonagall's eyes and smiles sweetly. "Nothing at all."

* * *


	20. ghost

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Ginny is rather ghostlike, everyone thinks.

But she is terrified to go down the corridor to the dungeon, where the howling torches will flicker and reveal her gaping mouth and empty eyesockets as she drifts down dreamily, more though suspended in a nightmare. And once she reaches it, she sits and gawks at his face and his hair and his nose that is dripping off his face.

"Weasley," her partner prods, in a hiss, because she has taken back that little slice of admiration she had given to Ginny. "Pay attention."

The Slytherin witch ends up doing most of the assignment, threatening to put a wart hex on Ginny's nose if she doesn't at least chop up rat tails. (Snape's eyes can be seen flickering up at the knifeblade each time she makes a careless chop.)

Her partner watches warily from the corner of her eye, almost certain they'll make it through the class period without any mishaps - she is wrong. When she hands Ginny vile to take a sample ("It's the least you can do") for a grade, Ginny's arm drifts outward and knocks the cauldron over. The partner shrieks and Snape looks remorseful as he docks five points from Slytherin for being too loud and his eyes look less regretful when he wheels to Ginny and sneers, "Ten points from Gryffindor. Afterclass, Weasley."

The bell rings and Ginny slings her bag over her shoulder, going up to Snape's desk with a rather empty expression. But he isn't there, he is behind her in a second, wand pointed sharply at her throat and hand splayed over her jaw.

He is about to use Obliviate on her memory. But she just stares blankly up at him - as if she is ready. He can't do it though. Her eyes are a little rounder and not keen or green, he thinks. The grass is above the dirt, but the dirt is waiting below the grass to be dug up.

But her eyesockets blow out like candles after he smoothes her eyes shut, and he feels so dirty and corrupted - she tastes what she looks like to him, something wrapped up and warm from Honeydukes.

* * *


	21. limberlost

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

It's something catastrophic.

His fingers are tangled in his own kelp-top hair and he is moaning, not like a lover to himself. To his left is a sleeping, qualmless lamb who has just willingly swallowed at least half a flask of muddy potion and told him eagerly before she fell asleep she'll be glad to do it again. Right now, though, he hasn't even the courage to prod her beyond coaxing her mouth open with his tongue or hooking his crescent thumb under the strap of her brassiere.

She, of course, fancies as her napping little head swirls through a foggy dream, he will be still and silent and peaceful as she - not groping around the sheets, not smoothing a hand over her shoulder, not sweating a puddle or acting like a teenage lovebird, especially. This he is not and he will never be, denies himself vehemently as he fuses his beak onto her freckled cheek and lets the loggish, swampy perfume tunnel up his sunflower-seed nostrils. He is in a hazy nightmare.

She smells not like Lily, at all. But she looks and tastes as how he has always imagined her.

As long as her eyes are scrunched closed and she doesn't reek of wilderness, it'll be fine.

* * *


	22. brother dear

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Ron Weasley is confused.

He sits between Hermione and Harry at breakfast, tracking crunchy bacon into his mouth slowly as he watches his sister. (Unusually observant on this morning.) But she is humming a little ditty that he doesn't recognize and she has a secret smile as she tracks in her own crunchy bacon. When Ginny catches him, not without that same strange expression, he shivers a little.

It's almost worse than seeing a spider.

But not as bad.

Ginny's a spider-sister, Ron thinks, as she gets up and walks in a pace like she's knee-deep in a river. A rumply seventh-year Slytherin stiffens when she bumps into him but excuses her with a glare. Ginny doesn't seem to notice that, or the fact that she was egg yolk on her tie.

Hermione and Harry have to lean forward to talk to each other.

A warm, creepy smile is on her face as Ginny wanders down to the dungeon.

Ron thinks its unnatural.

* * *


	23. contracts

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Snape has drawn up a contract.

He can no longer bear every night and no sizzles on her skin: he is swimming a swamp of self-doubt and reservation. His hands are sore from a long, capricious parchment requiring Ginny to understand the nature of their relationship.

First, she gapes at him with accusing eyes, claiming that she isn't a child and they needn't to these sorts of things. He sees that relationships, for her, are natural things that needn't be fermented with papers and signatures and hand shakes. Then again, she hasn't had as much exposure to the Muggle world as he has. Really a shame that the girl doesn't understand professionalism.

It eases him when she grips the quill, biting her lip, then sinks back into the spiny-backed chair with a look of utter damnation: she believes her values have been overwritten. He believes she's right, but naive. Naive to think that a potion and an open body are anything to found a "natural" relationship on.

But he notices, as she sips her potion, her eyes are hiding something he wishes to see.

Ginny doesn't tell him this is evidence, although she should.

Trouble is something new to her.

* * *


	24. homebound

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Before anything can happen, it's the holidays.

Ginny is standing at the station with a scarf knotted around her throat, Fred and George flanking her as she and Ron exchange noxious fumes.

She is an expert in lowering her eyes and trifling the cracks in the cement like she's having a dream; Ron is just wondering what she's dreaming about and if ever she'll wake up.

"Mum and Dad'll be here soon." He rocks on his heels, gushing out a cloud of cold air.

"Dashing through the snow... " She begins to sing a jolly little hymn. "O'er the fields we'll go, laughing all the way."

Ron laughs for her. She doesn't seem to notice.

"Bells on Bob's tail ring, making spirits rise. Oh what fun it is to ride and sing our... "

She stops.

If he squints, Ron can see his parents in the distances, shivering with red noses. Despite that, they're laughing through their quivering gums. Soon enough, they'll be back at the Burrow where Ron can gorge himself on Christmas cakes until he's purple.

As purple as the sugarplums dancing in Ginny's head.

* * *


	25. tree

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Ginny feels very heavy while she loads the Christmas tree with gaudy ornaments.

Heavy like she's just been swimming around in a frog pond for the last few weeks, and she's just now plodding past the lily pads and showering the grass with droplets.

Ron hands her one end of the popcorn string while he wraps it around, tempering it out so it doesn't tangle. He's dodgy in conversation when she talks; she suspects he knows something about something. That makes her feel heavy, too.

"Ron," she says softly.

He finishes up the third ring of popcorn then arranges them a little more neatly. His upper lip is pushed out and his eyebrows are high. "What?"

She hesitates. "Do you know ... do you know where Harry'll be staying for the holidays?"

"At Hogwarts, 'o course. You know that."

Ron doesn't look the slightest bit cunning or sly -- he doesn't appear to have noticed her quick fix. All for the better then, she thinks while she slackens for the fifth ring. Maybe her brother is just a git as any other.

* * *


	26. socks

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

Snape sits in his office, lotioning his feet.

The Headmaster, the evening before, had been in a particularly festive mood, handing out gifts he'd bought during his recent Hogsmeade shopping trip. He had even trimmed his beard with holly. Before he'd left for bed, Dumbledore placed a small jar of foot lotion in Snape's hand with a small, giddy smile. Snape had huffed and pocketed it, leaving it on his desk until this evening.

It's Christmas-scented. The jar is closed now, but when he opens it it breathes out some magical quality -- like it's personally enchanted to remind him of Christmases past. He remembers a particular one, in which for a gift he received loosely-knitted socks. They are in the top drawer of his desk.

He debates for a moment; they no longer fit, they're colored maroon (a color that has always rendered him a shade paler, if that's possible), he's allergic to alpaca wool and, well, he's never sent a gift before. He snickers a little, as he packages them up, that to his receivee these will be bordering on new. If a decade before of her birth is.

That night in the owlery, he wonders if he's being rash.

* * *


End file.
